


Stalemate

by JennaMoon



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Blood, Falling In Love, Forktails, Gore, Love Potion/Spell, Multi, Nonbinary Jaskier | Dandelion, POV First Person, Past Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Singing, Toussaint (The Witcher), battles, only a little
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:35:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24216763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaMoon/pseuds/JennaMoon
Summary: Jaskier runs away from their past. Too bad its quickly catching up.Geralt, as per usual, finds himself dropped in the middle of filthy human politics.Furious Viscounts and pesky love potions are all what's needed to bring the two into a stalemate:fall out of love, or fall with a rope around their neck.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Kudos: 5





	Stalemate

The battle was intense. And quick.

One moment, we stood as a band of laughing, merry minstrels. Talking of wines from Toussaint and leather shoes and which region produced the finest sheepskins. The next, we’re scattered about the promenade. Limbs lay metres from still bodies, flesh torn and seeping blood. It ran, so much the soft ground was quick to muddy.

I, being the first to notice the danger and in what was perhaps the safest position, cowered under the stage.

“Julian, help!” One man, barely known to me… a ticketseller, perhaps? Well, he could see me, as my limbs worked to wriggle my body further into the gap between soil and stage. His eyes, a wide, frightened green, were searching desperately. What for? He then let out a screech.

It was horrid. A twisted, terrible sound that only grew as he moved his neck, to assert his gaze. I followed his head, and held back a scream of my own.

His hand, lower arm… half of the upper… was gone. Instead, the rigid, uneven stump, gushing blood… instead that, reached towards me, thumping onto the ground. Its consequential vibration fissured to me, though all I could do to let out a foul retch. It seemed the fancy Toussaint wine, with notes of honey and oak, would be making a quick return.

Before I could bring myself to stir into any action or reaction (other than the sick churn of my stomach), the ticketseller’s screaming head was turned to pulp by a heavy thud. It squished, frightfully, splattering across the ground.

Something contacted my elbow, my cheek. A sole, detached eye rolled towards me. My face, smeared with blood and brains, was reflected, in those terrified, green hues. I felt a surge in my throat, a mix between a squeal and another filthy retch. I was quick to cover my mouth. I wouldn’t give away my position, I couldn’t.

The beast, with its terrible horned nose and dry-scale body, sniffed about the corpse below its talon. I froze, but for a second… if it saw me, I had no doubt that the beast would have no difficulty splintering the rickety stage and crushing my own skull in beneath its bloody talons.

To be a feast, for some cruel monster… well, that would never do. To die at 18, new to the wider world and so close, so, so, so close to being finally free…

I pushed myself, head hitting the wooden beam, back, to the wooden stump in the centre of the covered floor. It was wide, and sturdy. I hoped it would do the trick.

I couldn’t see the beast from where I lay; but I could hear it ripping at something fabric, stepping on skin-covered bones…

Crash!

I gasped as their ground shook and a fierce, guttural roar left the beast. The stage seemed to splinter, I felt the debris fall onto my back, dust and thin chippings of wood bedding into my hair. A breeze, so powerful I almost felt the stump uproot, came bruising past, then left. Almost like it didn’t happen…

“You piece of filth!” A low growl. Human, though. The voice was rough and full of dark, powerful emotion. I cast my brain, to think if I knew the owner of such tonality… but nobody came to mind. Another growl occurred, far more bestial… and then there was nothing besides my own pants and the shuddering breath of the stranger not too far…

As I said in the beginning of this tale… the fight was quick. And intense.

“You can come out.” The low voice spoke, still laboured. A few moments passed, and the voice repeated itself.

I crawled, quite quickly, to the open air, making a wide berth of the loose eye. Once out, a hand was there to help me up onto my shaking, muddied legs. It stayed on my shoulder, as if without it I would crumple to the floor. I followed the hand, to the armour-clad arm, padded shoulders… to a thick neck, damp with perspiration…

I initially, in those quick moments, assumed it was a knight errant. We were close to the Duchy, where many a knight would wander the lands to prove themselves worthy. Their stupidity would make for excellent tales.

I was quick to reassess my saviour once I met his yellow, slit eyes. The man’s hair was white, long and in a loose tie. He boasted a scar on his forehead, and sharp stubble around his cheeks, chin and philtrum. His complexion was pale, save for the splatters of dark red blood on his cheek and nose.

His eyes were flickering, taking in me, my body, my clothing… he nodded to himself. Slow, sure. “Are you alright?” He asked, though I could tell he knew the answer. At least, in terms of my physicality.

I opened my mouth to speak, before noticing the medallion hanging freely from a chain on his neck. A wolf, mouth agape. Mid-attack.

“You… you’re a Witcher.” I said, lamely. My saviour nodded, his fixed gaze not changing. At least, if there was a change then it was imperceptible.

“I am.” He replied.

I remember stories, many involving Witchers. Mutants that killed monsters for coin. Their humanity stripped from them as young boys. Trained and reprogrammed. Sent onto the Path to make a profit from peoples’ suffering.

I always thought it odd, to chastise a trade in such a way. You’d pay a soldier to kill a man, a rat-catcher to kill a rat. Why would paying a Witcher for killing a monster with such ease be a bad thing? I suppose I could have asked him, this Witcher in front of me.

Instead, I made a show of looking through my pockets, patting the empty pouches down. The Witcher smiled, a thin line that upturned at the corners. More like a grimace, really. “I… have no money.” I admitted, sheepishly. “But… I suppose you might find something in the carriages helpful?”

The Witcher looked around the ruined showgrounds and let out a quiet ‘humph’. I took a moment to look, too.

Out of all twelve of us, travelling performers all… I was the only one left. I must have buckled, because the hand that had never left my shoulder tighten, grounding me. For a few minutes, I concentrated on my breathing. Once I was in control of my diaphragm, feeling the air fill and disperse, I met that yellow gaze once again.

“Do you have a home?” He asked.

The laugh that left my lips, a high-pitched, half-whine of a thing, startled the Witcher. “No… I… I don’t have a home. I’m a…”

“I’m headed to Posada.” The Witcher interrupted, casually picking a piece of brain out his white hair. “If that’s any use. This was a stupid place for a show.”

“It’s close enough to Reidburne!”

“They don’t give two shits about a dozen travelling poets and their starving horses.” At last the strong hand left my shoulder, and steadied at the Witcher’s side.

“We sold tickets.”

The two went silent again, and I walked towards the bodies, sighing softly. “Can we bury them? They were… kind to me.”

“I need to burn them, but we can take time. Are there people we should… contact? Families?”

I looked at the body of the man who had begged me for help, his headless corpse surging a deep feeling within me. I knew the feeling all too well; hope. I didn’t know the man’s name. The group had picked me up three days ago, told me they could get to Oxenfurt, eventually. A few dirty songs and kisses had been more than enough to secure me a place in their wagons… and I had not learnt his name.

Still, I could give him one. An important name. One that would be honorific. A name that would be repeated, in disbelief, with the words ‘dead and gone’ in toe… it would be my apology.

“That man,” I pointed at the corpse “Julian Alfred Pankratz, son of the Viscount de Lettenhove.”

“That’s a start.” The Witcher began to drag the body into the centre of the ruins. “I suppose I should learn your name, before we start introducing me to the dead.”

I had given my name to a nameless man… a stranger, really. So I needed a new one. Something better than before, something to ease people in, be eagerly shared between patrons at the finest eateries and taverns and Inns. Another good deed, I thought. Another opportunity. But what could fill such a role?

My eyes glanced about once more, this time looking at the monster, impaled onto the wooden stage by a long, glistening blade. Its horrid face, covered in blood, human blood, was two the left. As if sleeping. I closed my eyes and took in a deep, long breath.

“Jaskier.” I spoke gently, so soft I do think he would not have heard it if the Witcher were an ordinary man. But he did, as he repeated my new name slowly. “That’s right.”

“Hmm. I’m Geralt, Geralt of Rivia.”

We were quite quick to burn the bodies. I cried, of course. Their kindness had been plentiful.

I had come across the group of travelling minstrels on the grounds of Toussaint, playing by the tourney grounds. There was an alluring charm to their notes, the way they made the melodious chords from the lute lull against the crash of the tambourine. A flute, never pausing at an odd moment for air… and clapping, in perfect beat!

Oh, it was joyous! I hadn’t noticed, truly, that I had wandered into the performance area. I blame the ticket seller, the very man I had gifted my name onto. He had not been paying attention to notice me, to halt me in my tracks. So I simply, captivated by the music, wandered into the circle of paying audience and stood, not too far from a group of washerwomen, who seemed to be taking in turns to make doe eyes at the flute player.

I too, could understand their persistence in gaining his attention. The flute player, Dryden of Mount Marshal, was a young, handsome man. I may have given him a wink and comely smile, who knows? But he smiled at me, short and quick, as he took in a well-deserved breath.

His father was a quartermaster, he told me. He learned how to play the flute from his uncle, and it was quick to become fact in Mount Marsh that Dryden could play any song, any note, any soft bird ballad effortlessly. Dryden had come to explain to me that he could hear the pitch of the note and play it back. He had always been able to.

I leaned closer and whistled a few notes. At the time, I didn’t have any clue if what I whistled were indeed what he had claimed them to be. Still, now I do not think I’d be able to claim to have such a skill. But Dryden did possess such talent.

And what a waste of talent it turned out to be…

Still, Dryden and the other performers played a fabulous set, and once they were finished, I was quick to follow the women out the show area. Until, I was yanked, unceremoniously, behind a carriage.

I thought I was going to be beaten! The troupe stared me down, ready to fight. Even Dryden of Mount Marsh was frowning, those boyish looks sullied.

“I can play you a tune!” I yelled, quick to find compensation. I don’t think I truly believed it would work, the skittish promise from some dirty toll-dodger. But I was let go, walked to the makeshift stage and ordered to perform.

And that was when I was able to join them on their journey, at their request.

Geralt, the Witcher, didn’t seem too enchanted by my tale. “So they took you with them? An extra head to feed and shelter?” He was searching through the rubble of ticket seller’s station. For coin, I assumed.

“It appears, darling Witcher, that they thought my voice as more than enough payment.”

Geralt snorted, a feint smile on his lips. “Bollocks.”

I laughed, feeling so remarkably comfortable as I helped search. I took a quick walk to the carriage, when I felt something pop under the soft leather of my boot. I knew, deep down, what it was. Still, I gave a silent prayer to the Gods that I was wrong… I removed my foot and peeped down.

Below, upon the green, Southern grasses, the newly titled Julian Alfred Pankratz’s other eye. Mushed up.

Geralt was beside me very quickly as I let out a quiet ‘oh no’ and felt my knees buckle.


End file.
